Anime Underground Anime With Unusual Takes On The Afterlife

List Rules Vote up the anime with the strangest versions of the afterlife.

In anime, the story isn't always over when the protagonist's life is. In fact, there are plenty of great anime about life after death. While some of these afterlife anime have traditional heaven and hell set-ups, others get very creative. For example, take Death Parade, where living mannequins force the dead to play a physically and emotionally torturous game designed to draw out their inner nature and help said mannequins judge whether they should be reincarnated or obliterated.

Sound a little too gritty? Try DBZ, where reincarnation happens so frequently that death is basically meaningless, and dead fighters get their very own personal martial arts tournament. Want something trippy? Check out Cat Soup, where a humanoid kitten must retrieve his older sister's soul from a bodhisattva, a quest that somehow involves elephants made entirely out of water.

Whatever your tastes, you're sure to find something on this list of unusual takes on the afterlife that suits them. Vote up the anime that have the whackiest and weirdest takes on life after death.

InDeath Parade, living mannequins called arbiters put humans through rigorous tests to determine whether or not they deserve reincarnation or oblivion. These tests involve significant physical and emotional pain - for example, in the first episode, a young couple have their organs linked with a dartboard, so that each hit to the board pierces their bodies. Arbiters use the dead humans' reactions to those tests, combined with their memories, to decide their fate.

What makes Death Parade truly interesting is the conclusion it comes to. Decim, the arbiter we spend the most time with, ultimately realizes that he cannot actually determine whether a person is good or bad using these methods. In fact, he comes to believe that he might be creating "punishable" traits that weren't there before, by putting humans through extreme and painful experiences. Ultimately, the harsh judgment of a dispassionate, godlike being is deemed unfair and unreasonable.

While the idea that nothing happens after death is fairly common in the real world, it's pretty rare in anime that involve gods of death. Death Notefeatures Shinigami (gods of death) who add to their own lifespans by killing humans with a magical notebook. The Shinigami hang around in their own realm, watching the human word and being bored out of their minds. However, when humans die, they don't join the Shinigami in their weird realm - they go to a place called "mu."

Mu is a complex Zen Buddhist concept which, roughly speaking, means "no" or "does not have." In Death Note, it means that there is no afterlife - an unexpected choice for a series featuring Shinigami.

Angel Beats!, an anime that is frequently cited as one of the best shows around, focuses on a form of purgatory. The main characters are dead teenagers who are unwilling or unable to fully accept their own deaths. They attend school in the bizarre Afterlife Academy, which is populated primarily by NPCs, or beings that appear human but lack souls. Few of the actual humans, who do have souls, don't fully understand the rules or purpose of this place, and much of the series is spent finding some answers.

The students discover that the main objective is to lead fulfilling lives that they were denied in the living world before finally passing on. Angel Beats uses the afterlife to showcase both resistance toward death, and ultimately, acceptance of it.

As you may have gathered from the name, Hell Girlis about Hell. It's also about Hell's interaction with the world of the living. Ai Enma, the titular hell girl, operates a website where people request that their enemies be dragged directly to hell. In exchange, they condemn their own souls to the same fate after they die. What this means is that the responsibility of deciding who goes to Hell and who doesn't is at least partially in human hands. It also means that humans can be sent to Hell, whether or not they've actually died.

Top 10 Current Queries:

mobile sitecontact uswe're hiringembed a listdata bloglistopedia like us on facebook follow us on twitter follow us on pinterest subscribe to our top lists Information and media on this page and throughout Ranker is supplied by Wikipedia, Ranker users, and other sources. Freebase content is freely licensed under the CC-BY license and Wikipedia content is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation license.